`Santa Shouldn`t Ad Lib,` So Actor Won`t Don Suit

November 27, 1985|By Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune

``Listen, the reason I won`t appear in the suit is the same reason I don`t think Charlton Heston would go on a talk show dressed as Moses or that Sylvester Stallone would put on a bandana and be interviewed as Rambo.``

The speaker was veteran actor David Huddleston, who most recently won plaudits in Chicago and on Broadway as Willy Loman`s neighbor in the Dustin Hoffman revival of Death of a Salesman.

But the suit that Huddleston was telling a reporter that he wouldn`t wear for a TV interview was not a salesman`s suit. It was, of all things, a Santa Claus suit.

That`s because Huddleston, 55, plays jolly old St. Nick in the new multimillion-dollar production of Santa Claus -- The Movie, brought to you by many of the same people responsible for Superman -- The Movie.

The heavily hyped Santa Claus opens today nationwide opposite Rocky IV, and the Santa Claus distributors, Tri-Star Pictures, very much would like Huddleston to wear the suit on TV interviews. The reason: More TV talk-show producers will book Santa Claus than will book David Huddleston.

``Tri-Star told me that nobody in America knows who I am,`` Huddleston said, seated in a New York hotel room, dressed in a very un-Santa-like shirt, slacks and tie.

But the reason he is refusing all TV interviews as Santa has nothing to do with a bruised ego, Huddleston maintains. Indeed, he will appear at the film`s New York and London charity-related premieres in costume.

``It goes back to an experience I had while we were shooting the picture last year in London,`` he said. ``A group of journalists were invited to the set to talk to me and Dudley (Moore, who plays one of Santa`s key elves). I said, `Hi!,` and I realized that it was the first time that I had talked to any outsiders while wearing the suit; it had been pretty much of a `closed set` while we were working.

``Anyway, I was surprised at the reaction of the journalists. Most of them seemed to turn into kids in the way they reacted toward me. They all said, `Hi, Santa.` It was the magic of the character.

``But then one young woman reporter said, `Santa, that`s a very beautiful fur coat you have on. What kind of fur is it?` And I said, `Well, I`m not sure, but I think it`s an arctic fox.` And she said, `Oh, is that on the endangered species list?`

``You don`t want to do anything to destroy the magic of the character. Yes, it`s just another part and it wasn`t particularly hard to do, but there is a special responsibility in playing it.

``What`s up on the screen in this movie is what a generation of kids will believe is Santa Claus for the rest of their lives. You don`t want to destroy that on a talk show.``

But Tri-Star, which wants profits now, is less concerned about the future than Huddleston, who admitted under much duress that the film company has been pressuring him for the last 14 months -- ever since that incident in London with the reporter -- to wear the suit to promote the movie.

``I haven`t talked about this,`` he said softly, ``but they`ve tried everything you can imagine.``

Offering a piece of the film`s profits, perhaps?

``I`ve already got that,`` he said.

An even greater piece?

``I`d rather not say,`` he said with a pained expression, followed by silence.

``Let`s just put it this way and leave it at that: It wasn`t as much what more they offered,`` Huddleston said, ``as what they threatened to take away.``

Talk about the Grinch who stole Christmas!

The last actor to go through a similar travail was another man in a famous suit -- Christopher Reeve in Superman. He, too, resisted exploitation of the character.

Luckily for Reeve, Superman -- The Movie turned out to be a smash hit, and he would wear his costume two more times for great fun and even greater profit.

But based on a preview last week of Santa Claus, Huddleston doesn`t have to worry about Tri-Star threatening to replace him in the sequel, if that in fact was their threat.

The film is a herky-jerky entertainment that begins as a lovely fable about the origin of Santa Claus in the 10th century, but winds up as a pedestrian caper comedy in which elf Dudley Moore battles against an evil 20th century toymaker (John Lithgow), who wants to exploit Santa and his elfin magic.

That Huddleston doesn`t have a single scene with Lithgow -- that the film`s greatest good doesn`t directly confront the film`s greatest evil -- is one of its principal failings.

And yet little ones are likely to be entertained by the film -- which should prove to be a greater consolation to Tri-Star than to parents who accompany their children to the theater. The film has none of the romance of Superman or the poignancy of the season`s other Santa-related movie, One Magic Christmas.